The customer

Arbeitsgemeinschaft AOK-Rechenzentrum Bremen/Lower Saxony performs exhaustive data center services for the employees of the two AOK health insurance providers that cover Bremen and Lower Saxony. With some 2.2 million insured, AOK Bremen/Bremerhaven and AOK Lower Saxony are the market leaders in their respective states. Approximately 100 locations give members convenient nearby service.

The challenge

The goal of AOK’s internal IT service provider was to run oscare® with a very high level of availability to ensure end-user satisfaction. The steady increase in the need for resources and budgetary constraints made it necessary to configure IT systems to do more with less, and the very tight rollout timetable for oscare® called for exceptionally flexible deployment of additional resources.

The solution

The goal of AOK is to achieve cost-efficient operation and customer-oriented service. oscare®, an industry-specific software solution, gave AOK a set of intelligent software tools that can handle all business processes employed by statutory health insurers. This solution, which is based on standard SAP software with special add-ons for statutory health insurers, was developed by AOK Systems GmbH, a systems integrator and software house that serves statutory health insurers. In addition, the use of a FlexFrame Dynamic IT solution and PRIMERGY Blade Server technology from Fujitsu gives Arbeitsgemeinschaft AOK-Rechenzentrum Bremen/Lower Saxony an IT infrastructure with performance and storage capacity that can be effectively scaled to accommodate new challenges as they arise. Operation of the SAP infrastructure is at the same time significantly more reliable and more efficient than the previous solution and features simpler management.

The project

ARGE AOK-Rechenzentrum Bremen/Lower Saxony is the internal AOK IT service provider. Its data center resources are used by AOK employees at approximately 100 locations in Lower Saxony and Bremen. oscare®, an industry-specific software solution that is well established in the healthcare sector, provides access to SAP-based professional applications designed to support the business processes and needs of statutory health insurance providers. As a result of the increase in resources required to handle the new applications supported by oscare®, IT management of Arbeitsgemeinschaft AOK-Rechenzentrum Bremen/Lower Saxony decided to expand the SAP infrastructure in place and introduce new technology.

ARGE AOK-Rechenzentrum Bremen/Lower Saxony is the internal AOK IT service provider. Its data center resources are used by AOK employees at approximately 100 locations in Lower Saxony and Bremen. oscare®, an industry-specific software solution that is well established in the healthcare sector, provides access to SAP-based professional applications designed to support the business processes and needs of statutory health insurance providers. As a result of the increase in resources required to handle the new applications supported by oscare®, IT management of Arbeitsgemeinschaft AOK-Rechenzentrum Bremen/Lower Saxony decided to expand the SAP infrastructure in place and introduce new technology.

oscare® can now be started on any server in the FlexFrame pool in a matter of minutes, which results in a significant reduction in installation and maintenance. This unique solution is ideal for consolidation of SAP-applications on PRIMERGY industry-standard servers.

The benefit

Modernization of the SAP infrastructure for the area of oscare® professional applications

Improved operational reliability

Improved productivity

Simplified administration

Flexible rollout and rollback of software updates

Reduction of required investment volume by approximately 30 – 40%

Products and services

Server: 72 x Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX920 Blade Server

Speichersysteme: 3 x NetApp Metrocluster (FAS 3170, 3270 and 6280)

Netzwerk: 8 x Cisco Switch

FlexFrame Version V5.2

Conclusion

According to Klaus Mayer, Service Area Manager Production of Arbeitsgemeinschaft AOK-Rechenzentrum Bremen/Lower Saxony, the quality of customer support and the capacity for innovation were the key drivers behind the decision to choose Fujitsu and FlexFrame: “Our partner Fujitsu took our needs and requirements seriously from the very beginning and provided the effective support it took to select and deploy an economical solution.” The virtualization achieved with FlexFrame gives the customer exceptional flexibility.

The SAP-based industry-specific oscare® solution is stored centrally and can be started on any server whenever necessary. Software distribution is not necessary, and updates and patches can be installed quickly and easily without downtime. Today, operation of the AOK data center is more reliable, more efficient, and administration is easier.